
Cara Boneresi,
It's friday May 9th, and I've yet to eat dinner any night this week, but I have due piatti lunches, great penne arabiata, and fresh fish, simply cooked w/ lemon a side of patate rosata, carfucci romana and a bottle of nero d'tavola sicilian red wine in which you can taste the dirt.
Radio interview on the Radio Fandango, hosted by Nicola [el greco], a wide ranging interview touching on political situations as reflected in films then and now, yes, Celluloid #1 is a very political film and they noticed that in Italy, not so much in Kansas City. Tonight I have to work the international docs, having missed one of them because of the party last night, "margem", I sit through "ironeaters" tonight, by Shaheen Dill-Riaz. It is a bangladesh-german co-production, shot on 35mm and it was about the shipping industries international scrap yard off the coast of Bangaladesh. It should have been a great film, incredible footage, incredible talent, but it was dull as day old donuts. Cut completely wrong, this is the trouble I have with docs which I hate, it is not an art form, it's barely journalism. They were taking apart container ships huge, it was like richard serra sculptures falling into the ocean. They didn't nail the workers, they were objective, and objectivity is the DEATH of cinema. But it's a film that could be recut and be brilliant, I know he has the footage. The 2nd film, quite more entertaining was "Hafners Paradise" an Austrian production by Gunter Schvaiger. It was about an unreformed Nazi, who lived openly in Franco's Spain, it is very current, being that it is such a PRO-NAZI-BUSH-CLINTON time and actually quite entertaining, A great pig farm scene about the superiority of German pigs, and a great meeting of the unreformed nazi's club, a guy there proudly saying I was on the plane that bombed Guenerica, and Oberlieutenant Hafner is pretty good, sitting around his apartment singing Nazi youth songs and talking about Hitler for eternity, but it's still more television than cinema. Two good wind up scenes, the first is he goes to meet his contemporaries in a coastal town and no one will return his call, the other is a camp survivor who confronts him at the end. Your 76 years old you look pretty good, but in the end the supergerman Hafner starts to break down, his teeth are killing him like the rot of the lies he has built his whole life around.
I go to bed early and am a very good boy friday night.
Saturday, is three international docs with"all white in barking" by gregory issacs, that's the only one worth mentioning. There seems to be no rigor in their film making, I discuss with florence by fellow jury member on the way back to the Cinema Farnese, we haven't seen the winner yet. Though we both, actually including danilla our fellow jury member have all missed "Margem" by Maya Da-Rin, which Massimo said" e meravigliosa", we know we have to watch it in the morning before we give the award. It's phag off night at the cinema Farnese, and I buy beers and smoke joints on the campo for Bruce la Bruce's film, Otto or up with dead people. But the short before is by my fellow juror Florence Fradelizi, "Bonne Bourre" 3mn's long and a porno/fiction, it is phenomenal, PURE DILDO POETRY, this was back when girls were girls, unlike the manicured girls now. I am exhausted and for the only night I go to dinner with the tek festival crew , Massimo, Laura, Anna, Alessandro, Nicola and a couple I'm sure forgot and fellow film makers, Charles Lum [a self described festival rat and a new yorker] and Nina Menkes [l.a.], I manage a few bites and then back into the dark, to finish the phag zombie film, great scene the zombie and his ex lover talking, you should really take a shower, it wouldn't kill you.The phag off party is at the queer bar around the corner from the hotel there is a ton of drugs and all kinds of wild sexual happenings inside the bar, between black white gay straight male female, and whatever. I was a good boy I went to bed early.
Sunday I watched Margem at the secret garden hotel at 9a.m., Danillo was great bringing coffee to the room. [pictures will be put up at the blog spot] and then I finally I saw the winning film, a two day journey along the amazon from a point to Brazil to a point in Peru, it was beautifully shot, languidly cut and mixed with early black and white footage from the first ever trip up the amazon. It was situational and conceptural and poetic. At noon I meet my fellow jurors for pranzo and we basically agree on the winner and the runner up, we eat strozzipretti pasta and drink wine in the roman sunshine.
Sylvia an american doc about the revolutionary italian/american woman silvia baraldini is just fantastic. the awards ceremony is at the Cinema Trevi, and they've decided I will present the award in Italian and after rewriting the english translation I read the award in Italian and in english. It's been a great festival, and I end up a good boy and go to bed early, NOT.
Monday was an off day, though ended up at the Harun Farocki opening and then dinner with my tek festival friends at an incredible testaccio restaurant, cacio e cocci [via del gazometro 36] where bone film picked up the tab. the morning was collazione with my girlfriend Loridanna and Danillo, and now back here energized, alive and jet lagged.
tanti baccione
bone blog.